Boreal forest carbon exchange and growth recovery after the summer 2018 drought
- 1Dept. of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University, Sweden
- 2Dept. of Geology, Lund University, Sweden
- 3Centre for Environmental and Climate Science, Lund University, Sweden
- 4Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
- 5Dept. of Forest Ecology and Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
- 6Dept. of Geography, Institute of Ecology & Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Estonia
In summer 2018, Northern Europe experienced an extreme summer drought in combination with unusually high temperatures, which had a substantial impact on agricultural yields as well as on forest growth conditions in various ways. An earlier study, using ICOS RI (Integrated Carbon Observation Research Infrastructure) stations and other forest ecosystem stations in the Nordic region, shows that the drought dramatically decreased NEP in the southern Scandinavian and Baltic region, almost nullifying the carbon sinks in some of the forests [1]. Such severe conditions during a single year could be expected to influence a forest over following several years. Reduced tree storage of carbohydrates leads to a changed carbon allocation pattern in spring that may affect both the woody growth and pests' resistance. It is thus important to reveal the impact of such climatic events over a more extended period.
This study aims at assessing the carry-over effects of the extreme weather conditions on the carbon and water fluxes and the forest growth to the years after the event. The analysis is based on measurement from the stations shown to be significantly affected by the drought through reduced carbon fluxes in 2018: the spruce forests Hyltemossa and Skogaryd and the mixed forests Norunda, Svartberget, Soontaga and Rumperöd. The ecosystem carbon and water fluxes will, together with tree-ring width data, be used to assess the carbon and water exchange and growth recovery in the years after the extreme 2018 drought (2019 and 2020) by comparisons to earlier normal years and extreme events.
[1] Lindroth, A., et al. (2020): Effects of drought and meteorological forcing on carbon and water fluxes in Nordic forests during the dry summer of 2018 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B37520190516 https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0516
How to cite: Linderson, M.-L., Holst, J., Edvardsson, J., Heliasz, M., Klemedtsson, L., Klosterhalfen, A., Krasnova, A., Linderson, H., Martínez García, E., Mölder, M., Peichl, M., Sohar, K., Soosaar, K., Tung Chen, T., Vestin, P., Weslien, P., and Lindroth, A.: Boreal forest carbon exchange and growth recovery after the summer 2018 drought, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10253, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10253, 2021.
